Thank you to all of those who have reviewed, favorited, etc.; they made my day. :) So, two chapters in a week! Man I'm on a roll! Probably from those reviews I got. ;) Special thanks to HextheDaydreamer, Tiryn, and laurenrulez1 for your reviews!

Disclaimer: I only own Spirit and other OC characters

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I was warm.

My only thoughts as I sat suspended in my own mind, unfeeling. I did a lot of organizing in my own mind, straightening things up and getting things straight. It was actually kind of fun. I wasn't aware of anything, just the fact that I was warm and safe. And bored.

It took me a while to organize my thoughts, but I wish it had taken me longer. At least then, I would have had something to do. If this was what the eternal hunting grounds was supposed to be like, then I wanted out. It was so boring. But I was able to get a better assessment of myself. I managed to go through my own arsenal of DNA, figuring out what exactly it was that the scientists had placed into my own DNA. It was quite a broad array of creatures, though there weren't any repeats. For example, I could only shift into one breed of horse and one species of frog; apparently my dog form of a German Shepherd was the only one I had as well. Every creature that I did have, however, was adapt in some form of weaponry. My horse form was a black warhorse; I hadn't gotten that far in my studies in the Professor's library, so I couldn't tell the breed. The frog that I had was a poison dart frog. I had a couple of insects, but they included a wasp and a black widow spider. Everything either had poison or was large and powerful. As for the rare ones, like my sabertooth form, there weren't very many. As far as I could tell, I had the sabertooth tiger and some big scaly, lizard thing that I had seen pictures of, but couldn't think of the name of to save my life. Oh, and I had some flying reptile, too, with leathery wings and a freaky bill, but I couldn't pronounce it's name.

I don't know how long I've been in this limbo state; I was getting really tired of continuously going through my forms in my head, learning their strengths and weaknesses. There is one good thing that came out of being in limbo, though. There was this voice that kept talking to me. It sounded familiar, like I knew who it was, but it also sounded unfamiliar. Like a familiar voice that had been distorted. It would talk about little random things, like rebirth and fire and power. It kind of creeped me out at times, but it helped remind me of who I was; I just wish that it would tell me where I was. I knew I was in some kind of cocoon maybe; it was warm and comforting, like I said earlier, but that didn't help me discern if I was in limbo or anything.

I'm beginning to like that little voice.

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The voice was whispering to me again. Something about a phoenix. It kept saying that word over and over again; I think that that's its name. Phoenix talked to me more now; I let it. It was nice, saying that it had saved me because it had sensed something special in me. But what had it saved me from? Phoenix was still too new for me to really answer it nor did I really want to talk to it. I was content just to listen to its voice; it gave me something to do besides sleep and think.

More time has been passing, though I don't notice much anymore. I miss home.

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Something's happening.

I felt it when Phoenix started acting all weird. It kept shifting and getting anxious. Or was it excitement? I roused myself enough to instinctively look around, even though I knew what I would see. Darkness. Just plain darkness. Every now and again, I might see a ripple go through the blackness, but those moments were far and few in between.

The warmth was fading, and that's when I got worried. Though my physical body wouldn't move, I was able to move around mentally. I paced within my own mind, tail tucked between my legs. Phoenix whispered constantly, gibberish mostly, and nothing that I tried to make sense of. I continued to pace.

Phoenix suddenly stopped whispering and everything went incredibly still a quiet, like the limbo area was holding its breath. I stopped pacing.

The world suddenly exploded around me.

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I was suddenly standing. Not in limbo and not in the eternal hunting grounds. I was standing on a rock, in my human form. I looked around, startled. I wasn't dead.

"Jean? Spirit?"

I started, spooked at the sound of a voice, eyes going wide. Scott stood at the other end of the rock, a hand held up to shield his face from some strange light source. I only had to look down to see that the light source was coming from me and Jean, who stood just in front of me. Her hair was longer, and it even seemed even more fiery than it had last time. Her skin was paler, too. When I looked at myself in the same wonder that Jean was when looking at herself, I saw that my hair was also longer, annoyingly so, going down past my butt. It was lighter than before, a normal auburn instead of a darker shade. When I looked at my hands, the skin was pale and flawless. I felt powerful and strong; stronger than I had before I'd gone under the torrential flood with Jean.

"How?" Scott's voice brought me out of my thoughts, and I looked towards him, though I didn't trust my own voice.

"I don't know," Jean said, her voice soft and quiet, looking over herself again before meeting Scott's eyes. I watched as Scott got closer to Jean, touching her. I looked away to give them some privacy, but when I heard Jean saying, "Don't worry. I can control it", I turned my attention back to them. I tensed when I saw Jean taking off Scott's glasses, his eyes screwed tightly shut, as she talked to him.

"Jean . . . " I warned, my own voice quiet. Even my own voice sounded different and distorted.

"Don't worry," she said again. "Open them." I knew what Scott's eyes could do, and I wasn't comfortable with that fact that he was opening them in front of his mate. Yet, when he did open them, the red beams were being repressed. I watched in fascination as Jean used her telekinesis to keep Scott's eye beams from vaporizing us; I was even more fascinated to see that Scott's eyes were a deep blue. Scott managed to look at Jean for a few moments longer before they started to kiss passionately. I looked away, feeling a warm sensation on my cheeks.

Then, the whispering started again, louder than it had ever been before. I jerked my head up, wondering what had happened to Phoenix. It was whispering in my head again. I looked around for the mysterious voice that had spoken to me in the cocoon, but I couldn't see or scent anything. But something was wrong with Jean; her scent was off.

"Jean!" I started to shout before a sharp noise pierced my brain and everything went dark once more.

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Dun dun dun! So, it is now the beginning of X-Men: The Last Stand. Will the Phoenix effect Spirit? Will she be at the mercy of Jean? The more reviews, the faster I get these chapters up! Thanks again to HextheDaydreamer (who has her own line of amazing stories), Tiryn (who has been an amazing and devoted reviewer), and laurenrulez1 (who I hope to hear again from soon). ;) Thanks guys!

ML